mod_security, Client-Side Mail Filtering, and Graphy Word Puzzles

Hello and welcome to the first Linux newsletter of December 2003. While
family members are shopping, baking, and otherwise preparing for the holiday
season, let's see what's new in the world of open source development,
administration, adoption, and usage this week.

Let's ease into the month with something gentle. Oracle author Andrew
Odewahn recently delved into the interesting (if esoteric) world of graphing.
That's when he accidentally invented a new style of puzzle called RouteWord. Introducing
RouteWord explains a bit more of the theory and the rules. ONLamp and
Andrew are also proud to run one puzzle every day throughout the month of
December.

If you'll be spending time away from home in the coming month, you may
have to put up with slower-than-normal bandwidth. You also may have to do
tech support for relatives who may not be quite ready for a nice Linux or BSD
desktop. Chances are, they do know and dislike spam, though they may not know
what to do with it. That's where KIVILCIM Hindistan's Client-Side
Mail Filtering with SaveMyModem comes in. If you're not quite ready to
migrate your relatives to a mail server under your control, you can help them
get a handle on filtering out unwanted email while being gentle on their
bandwidth.

Finally, the upcoming holiday season represents a huge commercial
opportunity for online vendors. As well, the school break means that there
may be quite a few adolescent troublemakers with free time on their hands. If
you care about your data, you want as much security as possible. That's why
Ivan Ristic created mod_security, an Apache module that can log, detect, and
deny suspicious actions. Read more about it in Introducing
mod_security.

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ONLamp.com and Linux Devcenter Top Five Articles Last Week

Using and Customizing Knoppix
Several Linux distributions boot directly from CD-ROMs. How
many are usable in that state? How many are customizable in
that state? Klaus Knopper's Knoppix is perhaps the best known
of these distributions. Robert Bernier explains how to use
Knoppix and how to customize your own self-booting distribution CD.

Using Linux as a Small Business Internet Gateway
Internet access is vital to many small businesses. Creating a
reliable and worry-free connection used to be difficult. With
good software such as the Linux kernel, wvdial, Squid, Postfix,
and iptables, it's reasonably easy to set up Linux as an Internet
gateway. Alexander Prohorenko explains how.

Installing Oracle 9iR2 on Red Hat 9
While Oracle's understandably proud of their Linux support,
Oracle 9i is unsupported on the latest and greatest Red Hat.
That doesn't mean it doesn't work, just that you'll have to
do a little tinkering. Roko Roic demonstrates how to install
Oracle 91R2 on Red Hat 9.

Introducing mod_security
Every layer of security you can add is one more deterrent for the
bad guys. Writing (or choosing) secure code is important, but
it's not the only defense. Ivan Ristic, creator of mod_security,
explains how this Apache module can turn back potential attacks
before they reach your code.